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Paradise Lost remains as challenging and relevant today as it was in the turbulent intellectual and political environment in which it was written. This edition aims to bring the poem as fully alive to a modern reader as it would have been to Miltonâ¬Â"s contemporaries. It provides a newly edited text of the 1674 edition of the poemâ¬"the last of Milton's lifetimeâ¬"with carefully modernized spelling and punctuation. Marginal glosses define unfamiliar words, and extensive annotations at the foot of the page clarify Miltonâ¬Â"s syntax and poetics, and explore the range of literary, biblical, and political allusions that point to his major concerns. David Kastanâ¬Â"s lively Introduction considers the central interpretative issues raised by the poem, demonstrating how thoroughly it engaged the most vitalâ¬"and contestedâ¬"issues of Miltonâ¬Â"s time, and which reveal themselves as no less vital, and perhaps no less contested, today.

The edition also includes an essay on the text, a chronology of major events in Miltonâ¬Â"s life, and a selected bibliography, as well as the first known biography of Milton, written by Edward Phillips in 1694. [via]